http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/17/8... Imagine If Today's Right-Wing Were Around for Nuremberg by Cenk Uygur
Tue Nov 17, 2009 at 04:40:06 PM EST
I was talking to Frank Mankiewicz recently (he was the press secretary for Bobby Kennedy and campaign manager for George McGovern) and I asked him what's the difference between the right-wing in this country back in the 60's and 70's and right now. Certainly there were crazed conservatives back then, and in many ways they were even more dangerous and vicious back then. But Frank was more concerned about the right-wing of today. Why?
Cenk Uygur's diary :: ::
He said it's because back then they were considered the radical fringe and now they're taken seriously as part of the national conversation. Back then there were pockets of these guys in different parts of the country, but now they're national. So, every single issue is nationalized and made more partisan. The fringe is united behind their demagogues (mainly radio and television talk show hosts) and drive every issue into a senseless and fevered ideological battle.
It's as if we're taking the opinions of doctors and the lunatics at the asylum just as seriously. They are not equal and legitimate sources of information.
- snip -
Let alone what Wesley Pruden, editor emeritus of The Washington Times, had to say about Obama bowing "controversy":
But Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy '60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to "hope" for "change." It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.
Look at these statements -- "natural instinct or blood impulse"; "sired by a Kenyan father"; "born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World." Again, are you kidding me? We're supposed to take these guys seriously?
Imagine if we these right-wing lunatics were around - and were being taken seriously - after World War II. We would have never had Nuremberg. They would have gone ballistic; screaming for blood and seething at the idea of bringing Nazis to justice. They would have exacted a terrible political price for trying to bring these guys to trial. So, instead of setting a history making precedent on how victors in war can be just and fair, we would have lynched those detainees, punished the rest of Germany and made the same mistake as almost every other country in history by brutally oppressing the defeated.
But the current right-wing radicals (which includes nearly every major conservative talk show host in the country; they were unanimous in their agreement that KSM should not be tried in the American justice system) aren't just crazy, they're un-American. They missed the whole point of the country. What makes America great is our justice system. We don't take people out and shoot them in the head without trials. That's what despots and dictators do. We are a country of laws, not men. We are supposed to be exceptional in our justice, fairness and jurisprudence. These people don't believe in any of that. They just want blood. But we might be crazier than they are for taking them seriously.
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